of political offices and, with less bickering between differing and partisan legislators, govern more efficiently. In a multiparty country, on the other hand, the formation of a government depends on the maintenance of a coalition of parties with enough total strength to form a political majority. The weakness of the ties that bind the coalition may threaten the continuance of a cabinet in power. The stability shown by the government of the United States has not been entirely due to its party system, it has been argued, but has been promoted also by the fixed tenure and strong constitutional position of the president, as well as checks and balances built into the constitution to prevent one branch of federal government from becoming too powerful.The Founding Fathers of the United States did not mention political parties in the Constitution. When George Washington left office he warned the country of the "baneful effects of the spirit of party"(Crabtree 18). and James Madison believed that the new nation's politics would be structured around a greater number of "factions representing various segments of the electorate" rather than the overwhelmingly bi-partisan arrangement that exists today (Barone 64). Others felt they existed only to manipulate the independent will of the voters. Yet, by the end of Washington's first term parties had begun to prevail in the Congress and by the third presidential election the candidates ran on the basis of party support. Parties changed more rapidly in the nineteenth century as, for example, Henry Clay's Whig party declined after his death and "the Democracy of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren" dissolved in factional squabbling. But in the twentieth century the Democratic and Republican parties have been predominant despite occasional challenges from national-level third parties which usually affected only presidential races.Since World War II, the third-party candidacies of George Wallace (1...
